


The Negatives

by BellJarred



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Heavy Angst, Spoilers, pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 18:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9284849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellJarred/pseuds/BellJarred
Summary: Hadn't someone told her that instantaneous photography bore no negatives? [Pricefield]





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a spoiler statement, so be warned: I appreciate the option to save Chloe but I simply cannot get behind sacrificing an entire town’s worth of life for one person…no matter how incredible she is. So, this will be a bit of a Pricefield contemplation fic because I played through this game for the first time the other day and am very much not over it. Shout out to my lovely friend, Emerald, for gifting me LIS & Montaro.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure if I'm happy with this fic, so criticism would be appreciated! :D

Her fingers ghosted across the off-white perimeter of the photograph, easily recognizing it as a kindred spirit in the way the both of them had been ravished by time. She wondered faintly if her person bore the signs of such temporal erosion as noticeably as the object perched delicately betwixt her fingers seemed to – if she _too_ had become dingy, off-white.

Even the moment enshrined within the hackneyed Polaroid before her showed more promise of life than she could ever have hoped to muster, and for its part, seemed to look virtually unaffected by the weight of the years it carried. If she allowed her gaze to linger too long across its contents – if her fingers hesitated only a second too long against the curve of a carefree, painfully two-dimensional smile – she could just make out the familiar chortle of her best friend, sometimes even the congenial quips of the girl’s late father. The sound of them – once two-thirds of the Price family beckoned to her like sirens to a sailor – a deadly mantra forever on their lips, “ _Why’d you let us die, Max? You can_ still _save us._ ”

Sometimes, this scenario replicated itself in her dreams, and sometimes, in her waking hours, it progressed almost to the point of no return. Her bones could feel the comforting warmth of five-year-old sunlight as it filtered through the sliding doors of Joyce’s living room. If she would only let it go a minute further – if she would only _let it go_ – that warmth could spread to her organs too, and she’d find her heart to be thermal powered by her own personal sun. _Chloe_.

Often, and always with an increasingly postponed inevitably, her resolve would catch her once more. The image of that ephemeral afternoon would tear in her mind against the sharp reality of October 7th and the promise she could not break: the vow that had been cemented amidst the freshly chiseled grave of her best friend, her first love: “I will _never_ use my powers again.”

Her phone hums with all the intentions of a momentary relief from her reverie and her emotions cannot cross the divide between anguish and respite, her mind unable to cleave out a thought more than halfway between thanking the universe for the intervention or cursing it for it.

**_2 texts from Warren_ **

_Hey, Mad Max. Stella and I are hitting the drive-in tonight, you in?_

_This week’s GODZILLA-GANZA!!!_

She smiles despite herself at this invitation. Warren was always a sweetheart, so it was no surprise that despite his budding relationship with Stella Hill he always managed to find time for his friends. This, perhaps, rang particularly true for Max – with the general consensus behind the gesture amounting to a combination of lingering romantic affection, genuine comradery, and pity. After it had been revealed at the funeral that Chloe and Max were once adolescent partners-n-crime, everyone at Blackwell had taken a particular shine to pitying the poor Selfie Queen and her dead friend angst.

_Thanks, but I can’t. I promised Mrs. Price I’d cover a few shifts at the diner this weekend. I know you guys will have an awesome time, though! Fill me in on the lineup later._

After having reconnected with Joyce and David at Chloe’s funeral, Max had done all she could to ease the burden on their hearts – even if that meant peddling soup beans to drug dealers and clumsy truckers every once in a while, so that the two of them could have a break. After all, she couldn’t help but feel responsible for every panged sob Joyce uttered on Chloe’s behalf. Though Nathan had been the one to pull the trigger, Max herself had been the one to ensure that her death had transpired. She’d made the impossible choice once, huddled behind a cold tile wall – Chloe or Arcadia Bay – and ruled as she watched her best friend’s blood dye the floor of a school bathroom the color of liquid rubies, that one life, no matter how precious, was not worth hundreds.

She knew that the burden of such a juxtaposition was her burden alone to bear, as anyone who deserved to know would be unable to sacrifice Chloe’s life for their own, just as she knew that Chloe likely would have braved a life confined to failing lungs if only to see William alive and well. And so, she bore it day in and day out, pausing only to appreciate the temptation of a world in which things could have been different. A world in which, in the blink of an eye, she and her most precious person could be jostled along the outgoing roads of Arcadia Bay, a shattered town in their wake and a world of limited possibilities before them.

Maxine Caulfield pocketed her cell phone and then scooped up the tattered shoe box at her feet – a veritable doorway to happiness, always just out of her reach – and ignored the whispers of its contents – dangerous promises of buried treasure and birthdays long past. She placed the photograph of their two smiling, thirteen-year-old faces amidst all the other scraps of the friend she once knew. All of them Polaroid snapshots – she laughed bitterly to herself --perhaps it was in Mr. Jefferson’s class where she had first learned of the Polaroid camera’s disregard for negative development? Perhaps this was one of the reasons she found them fascinating? If only she had known then that a photograph without negatives was a promise the world simply could keep.


End file.
